Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion

Schmidt Number: S-4992

On-line since: 15th June, 2009

CHAPTER X

ON EXPERIENCING THE WILL-PART OF THE SOUL

WHEN the ordinary consciousness sets Will in action there is a part of
the astral organism at work which is more loosely connected with the
physical organism than the part which corresponds with feeling. And
already this part of the astral organism corresponding with feeling is
more loosely connected with the physical organism than is the part
corresponding with thinking. At the same time we have in the astral
organism of the will the true nature of the Ego. While something
psychic-spiritual which is continually active in the rhythmical part
of the physical organism corresponds with feeling, the will-part of
the soul continually permeates the metabolic organism and the
organization of the limbs. But it is only actively connected with
these parts of the human body while in the act of volition.

The connection between the thinking part of the soul and the
head-organization is a surrender of the psychic-spiritual to the
physical. The connection between the feeling soul with the rhythmical
organization is an alternate surrender and drawing-back. But the
connection of the will-part to the physical is at first felt to be
something unconsciously psychic. It is an unconscious longing for the
physical and etheric event. This will-part is by its own nature
prevented from being resolved into physical activity. It stands back
from it and remains psycho-spiritually alive. Only when the thinking
part of the soul extends its activity into the metabolic and
limb-organization, the will-part is stimulated to surrender itself to
the physical and etheric organization and to be active in it. The
thinking part of the soul is founded on a destructive activity of the
physical organism. During the making of thoughts this destruction
extends only to the head-organization. When the will ordains something
the destructive activity of metabolism and of the limb-organization
takes charge. The thought-activity flows into the organization of
trunk and limbs, where a corresponding destructive activity of the
physical organism takes place. This stimulates the will-part of the
soul to oppose this destruction with a re-building and the dissolving
organic activity with a constructive one.

Thus life and death are warring together in the human being. In
thought is manifest an ever dying activity while will stands for
something life-awakening, life-giving.

Those exercises of the soul which are undertaken as exercises of the
will, aiming at supernatural vision, are successful only when they
become an experience of pain. The man who succeeds in raising his will
to a higher level of energy will feel sorrow. In former epochs of the
development of mankind this pain was directly occasioned by ascetic
practices. They reduced the body to a state which made it difficult
for the soul to absorb herself in it. This caused the will-part of the
soul to break away from the body and to be stimulated to independent
experiences of the spiritual world. This kind of practice is no longer
suitable to the human organization which has reached the present
moment of earthly development. The human organism is now so
constituted that the presentation of the ego-development in it would
be disturbed if we went back to the old ascetic practices.

At present we must do the opposite. The soul exercises now wanted to
set free the will-part of the soul from the body have been
characterized in the previous studies. They do not achieve the
strengthening of this soul part from the direction of the body, but
from the direction of the soul. They strengthen the soul and spiritual
part of man and leave the physical part untouched.

Our ordinary consciousness makes us realize already how the experience
of sorrow is connected with the development of psychic experience.
Whoever has gained any kind of supernatural knowledge will say: The
happy, joy-giving events of my life I owe to fate; but my really true
knowledge of life I owe to my bitter and sorrowful experiences.

If the will-part of the soul has to be strengthened as is necessary
for the attainment of Intuitive cognition we must first
strengthen the desire which in ordinary human life is satisfied
through the physical organism. This is done by the exercises
described. If this desire becomes so strong that the physical organism
in its earthly form cannot be a foundation for it, then the experience
of the will-part of the soul enters into the spiritual world and
intuitive vision is attained. And then in this vision the
spiritual-eternal part of the soul grows conscious of itself. Just as
the consciousness living inside the body realizes the body in itself,
so spiritual consciousness realizes the content of a spiritual world.

In the alternating processes of destruction and construction of the
human organization, as they are manifested in the thinking, feeling
and willing organization of mankind, we must recognize the more or
less normal course of human life on earth. It differs in childhood
from that of the grown-up man. The task of the true pedagogue is a
perception of the effect of the destructive and constructive
activities in childhood and of the influence of education and tuition
upon them.

A true educational science can only arise from the
supernaturally-derived knowledge of the human nature complete in its
physical, psychic and spiritual being. A knowledge keeping solely
within the limits of what is attainable to natural science cannot be
called a foundation of a true educational science.

In illness the more or less normal course of the inter-relation
between the constructive and destructive elements is disturbed
throughout the whole organization  or in separate organs. We get
there an overbalancing either of construction in a prolific life or of
destruction in shifting forms of single organs or processes. What
exactly happens in this case can only be seen in the whole by someone
who has complete knowledge of the human organization, according to its
physical, etheric and astral organism, as well as to the nature of the
ego; and the cure can be found only by means of such knowledge. For in
the realms of the outer world are to be found mineral and herbal
things in which constructive knowledge recognizes forces which
counteract certain kinds of too strongly stimulating or too actively
lowering forces in the organism. In the same way such a counteraction
can be found in certain functions of the organism itself, which in a
state of health are not applied or stimulated. A genuine medical
knowledge, a real Pathology and Therapy can be built up only on a
knowledge of the human being which embraces spirit, soul and body, a
knowledge, moreover, which knows how to value the products of
Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The demand for such a medical
science is to-day called childish, because we view everything from the
ground of a physical science. From this point of view this is quite
intelligible, because according to it one has not the least idea how
much more is a complete knowledge of the human being than mere
knowledge of the human body. We can genuinely say that Anthroposophy
is aware of the objections of its opponents and knows how to
appreciate them. But just for this reason we also know how difficult
it is to convince these opponents.

The will part of the soul experiences also what passes in the feeling
parts, unconsciously as far as the ordinary life of the soul is
concerned; but in the depths of man's organization it occurs as a
combination of facts. The evaluation of human earth-activity completed
through feeling and will is there transformed into an effort to
contrast in further experiences a more worthy deed with a less worthy
one. The whole moral quality of the man is unconsciously experienced;
and from this experience is formed a kind of spiritual-psychic being
which during life on earth grows up in the unconscious region of the
human being. This spiritual-psychic being represents whatever earthly
life produces as a desirable objective, unattainable however by man in
earthly life, because his physical and etheric organism with their
forms predestined from former earth life, make it impossible.
Therefore man strives through this spiritual-psychic being or nature
to form another physical and etheric organism, through which the moral
results of the earth-life can be transformed in the subsequent
existence.

This new form can be achieved only if man carries with him this
spiritual-psychic nature through the gates of death into the
supernatural world.

Immediately after death the psychic-spiritual man retains for a short
time the etheric organism. In his consciousness at this point he has
no more than an indication of the moral value which has unconsciously
arisen during earth-life in the spiritual and psychic part of him. For
man is there completely pre-occupied with the vision of the etheric
cosmos. In the following longer state of experience (which I have
called the Soul-world in my Theosophy) a clear consciousness of
this moral valuation is actually present, but not yet the strength to
begin working at the construction of the spirit-cell which is to be a
future physical earth-organism. Man then still has a tendency to look
back at his earthly life because of his moral qualities acquired
there. After a certain time man can find the transition to a state of
experience in which the tendency is no longer there. (In my
Theosophy I have called the region here traversed by man the
real domain of the spirit.) From the point of view of the supernatural
thought-content to which man attains  after death  in the
cosmic consciousness  we might say: For a short while after
death man lives turned towards the earth and is permeated with those
spiritual activities which have their outward reflection in the
physical phenomena of the moon. Outwardly he has been separated from
the earth, but he is indirectly connected with it through a
spiritual-psychic content. Everything of world-spiritual value that
man during his presence on earth has developed into a real value in
his astral organism (or as expressed above: in the unconscious region
of his soul-life according to feeling and willing), all this is
permeated by the spiritual moon-activities already described. This
moral being with its spiritual quality is related by content with the
spiritual moon-activities, and it is they which hold man bound to
earth. But for the development of the spirit-cell for the future
physical organism he must also sever himself psycho-spiritually from
the earth. This he can only do by cutting himself loose at the same
time from the region of the moon-activities. There he must leave
behind that moral quality-being with which he is related. For the
working for the future physical organism in conjunction with the
spiritual beings of the supernatural world must take place unhampered
by that quality-being.

Man cannot obtain this severance from the region of the spiritual
moon-activities through his own psycho-spiritual powers. But it has to
be done nevertheless.

Before the mystery of Golgotha the science of initiation could speak
to man as follows: At a certain period of existence after death, human
experience has to be withdrawn from the lunar sphere which keeps man
within the region of planetary life. Man cannot himself bring about
this withdrawal. Here it is that the being, whose physical reflection
is the sun, comes to man's aid, and guides him into the sphere of pure
spirit in which he himself and not the spiritual moon beings are
active. Man then experiences a stellar existence in such a way as to
view the spiritual patterns of the fixed star constellations from the
farther side, as it were; from the periphery of the cosmos. This
vision is non-spatial even though the stars are made visible to him.
With the powers now permeating man his ability to form the spirit-cell
of physical organism out of the cosmos grows. The divine in him brings
forth the divine. Once the spirit-cell has ripened, its descent to
earth begins. Man enters once more into the lunar sphere and finds
there the being of moral-spiritual quality which he left behind at his
entry into the pure stellar existence; he adds it to his
psychic-spiritual being to make it the foundation of his destined
future life on earth.

The Initiation-science of Christianity finds something else. In the
absorption of the strength accruing to the soul through the
contemplative and active sympathy with the earthly life of Christ and
the Mystery of Golgotha, man gains, already while still on earth and
not aided only by the solar-being after death, the faculty of
withdrawing from the lunar activities at a certain point after his
earthly existence, and of entering into the pure stellar sphere. This
faculty is the spiritual counterpart, experienced after death, of the
freedom brought about in earthly life by the ego-consciousness. Man
then takes over in the period between death and re-birth his
moral-spiritual quality-being, left behind in the lunar sphere, as the
designer of his fate which he can thus experience in freedom in his
new existence on earth. He also carries within him in freedom the
earthly after-effect of his god-filled existence between death and
rebirth as religious consciousness.

A modern science of Initiation can recognize this and can see the
activity of the Christ in human existence. It adds to a living
Philosophy and to a Cosmology which recognizes also the spirit cosmos,
a religious knowledge which recognizes the Christ as the mediator of a
renewed religious consciousness and as the leader of the world in
freedom.

In these studies I have not been able to do more than sketch a
possible beginning of a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religious
Cognition. Much more would have to be said if the sketch were to be
converted into a coloured picture with all its colours.